ladyconsumer's Full Review: Microsoft Zune Black (30 GB) MP3 Player
When it comes to MP3 players, the world is divided into two camps - there's iPod, and there's "everything else". But as two Microsoft Zune 30's joined my household last year, I find myself in the "everything else" camp, trying to piece together the pros and the cons over here. Basically, I find several pros (like the price) and a few cons. But, overall, I'm a happy camper.
Let's face it, the price is one of the first things to consider when deciding on a player. Having found these Zune 30's for just over $100, I simply couldn't resist giving them a try. So, the price was right, but what about everything else? Well, as you'll see, there are plenty of good things and bad things with these machines.
The controls
There's a lock button at the top of the device that's clearly labeled, and easy to slide back and forth. Otherwise, there are only seven other buttons. Of those, only two are labeled and I can't see the labels unless they're right in front of my eyeballs. That's because the label is gray, and the button is, well, slightly darker gray. In other words, the labels are not very clear. But it's OK as the buttons are quite logical. And once you get used to them, you really won't need any labels.
On the right is the power button, which also serves as a pause button. On the left is a "back" button. It always takes you back to your previous screen, the same way your Internet browser's "back" button works. Then there's the circular control in the center of the player. Unlike other brands, this circle doesn't move. You can't spin it, and use it to scroll. Too bad. That's an excellent feature that other brands have. But in this case, the circle doesn't do anything except hold the five other buttons - up, down, right, left, and the center button for "ok". The up and down buttons are used for moving around in the menus as well as for volume control. I prefer players with external volume buttons.
When scrolling through long lists of items, holding the up and down buttons down puts you into fast-scroll mode. It's pretty fast, but I wouldn't mind if it were a bit faster. It takes 14 seconds to scroll from A to Z in my list of just over 1900 songs. While you're in fast-scroll mode the letter that you're up to displays on the screen to help you keep track of where you are.
The menu
The main menu is logical, and very easy to read. The main items are "music", "videos", "pictures", "radio", and "settings". As you use your up and down button to move through the menu, the item you're currently on is highlighted. This is a good feature. I've seen other players where it's difficult to tell which menu item you're on. In this case, you can easily tell, from any angle, where you are.
Once you choose one of the options, other menus open up. In some cases, the new menu will be written across the top of the screen, in which case you use your "right" and "left" buttons. Again, clear highlights tell you exactly where you are.
The music options
How your music is organized, and the various play options are probably an MP3 player's most important feature. In this case the options are songs, genres, albums, artists, and playlists. So, for instance, right now I have just over 1900 songs on my player. If I want to play them all I can do so, either alphabetically, or randomly (using the "shuffle" option).
Or, I can choose to listen by genre. Right now, my songs are divided into 13 different genres including, for instance, rock, dance, alternative, and soundtrack. Where do those genres get assigned? Well, when you download a CD, or a song from the Internet, the music comes pre-tagged with a genre. Or, you can simply edit the song, or the CD, if you want to change genres. You're not limited to a finite set of choices; you can make up your own genres, which are then available on the drop-down list, from that point on.
Similarly, I can play a specific album, or a specific artist.
But my favorite way to listen to music is through playlists. Think of playlists as "lists of favorites". You can have, for instance, a playlist that you use when exercising and a different one for relaxing. You can create as many playlists as you like, they hardly take up any space on your device, so feel free to get creative with them. When playing from a playlist, the songs will play in the order in which they were added to the list, or you can choose to shuffle them.
Videos
Watching movies on this player is as simple as listening to music. And, with its fairly large screen that automatically flips to landscape mode for videos, watching is actually quite pleasant. Getting videos onto your player is a bit of hassle, though. You either have to get them directly from the Zune site, or use a 3rd-party conversion tool if you want to download from your DVDs. I was able to find plenty of conversion tools online. Most let you try them for free, then pay around $35 if you want to purchase it. They're simple enough to use, usually there's a button called "convert video to zune" or something similar, and in less than an hour, you can have a two-hour movie on your player.
By the way, when the screen turns to landscape mode, the buttons change automatically. So, when the player is turned sideways, the button that's now on top is the "up" button. Clever!
Pictures
Pictures can be viewed in a number of ways including a slide show presentation. Pictures are always displayed in landscape mode. You can zoom into pictures, and choose the slideshow transition speed, and you can pick a picture to use as your background image, but that's it as far as picture options go.
Radio
Not all MP3 players include an FM radio, so if this is important to you, make sure you look carefully before you purchase. One feature that's sort of cool is that while you're listening to a song on the radio, you can flag that song. Later, when you connect to the Zune website, your flagged songs will be available for purchase.
Settings
There are plenty of options to set that make your Zune experience more fun. You can customize the look and feel (and sound) of your player in several ways. It's a simple matter of scrolling among the options and hitting the "ok" button when you find one you like.
The Zune software
The device is made to be used with the proprietary Zune software. This is not one of those players where you plug it in, and your computer "sees" the device as a removable storage. There's no drag & drop capability here. I actually prefer devices that work as described above, but with Zune, you have no options. You have to use their software in order to manage and organize your files.
Their software is "pretty good". It has many nice features, but it's by no means perfect.
The purpose of the Zune software is three-fold. The most important purpose is to manage your collection. What's a collection? That's the word they use to describe all of the files on your device. It includes all of your music, videos, and pictures. The second purpose of the software is to provide a gateway to the Zune store where they hope you'll purchase songs and movies. It's a simple matter to place items in your basket and pay for them. There are plenty of options for bundling purchases, and trying before buying. And the third purpose is referred to as "the social" where they think you'll develop a network of other Zune users, make them "friends" and share music among them. Well, I don't really need any more online "friends" so I ignore the whole "social" aspect.
But what really matters here is the collection. After all, this is where you decide what you want on your device, and how to organize it. The first task in setting up a collection is to tell Zune where, on your PC, your collection's music, videos, and pictures reside. You can accept Zune's default folder names or provide your own. Once Zune knows where your data is, everything in those folders shows up in the collection and is eligible for syncing with the device.
Speaking of syncing, let me briefly explain how that works. Syncing is defined as making your device and your collection match. It uses a "last action wins" theory. Meaning that actions taken on either the PC, or on your device will be replicated the next time you sync. So, if you delete a song from your device, it will be deleted from your collection. If you add a song to your collection, it will be copied to your device. Same with pictures and videos. Any action taken on either side will replicate on the other side. You can opt to have Zune sync automatically every time you connect your device, or you can choose to do it manually. Similarly, you can choose to NOT sync certain items if, for instance, you want some songs to be on your PC, but not on your device. The syncing portion of the software is very flexible and very easy to use.
How, exactly do you connect your Zune to the PC? Well, there's a USB connector cable. Or, you can use the Zune wirelessly through your WiFi network.
Going back to managing your collection - click the "collection" link on the Zune software and you'll be looking at a list. The list will be your music, your videos, or your pictures, depending on which part of the software you're accessing. On the song list, you can choose to view your collection by song title, by artist, by genre, by album, or by playlist. When viewing by song, you can sort songs alphabetically in either direction. If your song collection is quite large, it's a pain to use the scroll bar if you're looking for a particular song. Luckily you can type a single letter and the list will automatically jump to that letter in the list. Sadly, this trick doesn't work when viewing your music by album. I currently have over 200 albums in my collection. And even though I can sort the albums by date added, artist name, or album name, I have no way to quickly jump to a specific album. The same problem exists when viewing the songs in a playlist. You can sort the playlist by the date the songs were added, or alphabetically by song title, album or artist. But there's no way to jump to a specific song. I find this particularly annoying. I have one playlist with over 1500 songs. Using the scroll bar to jump to a specific song is annoying and time-consuming.
Scrolling would be better, if they'd utilize the screen more efficiently. But each page only displays 17 songs at a time. And when you scroll down a page, the next page doesn't start with the following song. So, page one shows songs 1-17. Page two shows songs 14-30, instead of 18-34 as you'd expect.
But, at least there is full right-click functionality. So, when your cursor is on a song, or an album, a simple right-click will give you all of the options that you can choose from that item. Also, windows standard shift-click and ctrl-click features are available to select ranges of items and individual items. I suppose being a Microsoft product has its advantages as we come to expect certain features to always be available.
But another annoying problem with the software is its lack of memory. Meaning that when you go from one section of the software to another, it doesn't "remember" the sort order you had chosen, or your placement in the list. So, let's say I'm looking at my playlist. I sort by song title, then scroll down to the P's to find "Patience". Now I want to do something else in the collection, then come back to the playlist by hitting the "back" link. I would prefer to find the songs alphabetized, and my cursor sitting on the song "Patience". But that's not what happens. Instead, the screen reverts back to its default sort order (by date added) and my cursor will be at the top of the list. This makes certain tasks difficult. For instance, suppose you want to go through your playlist, deleting songs from your collection that you no longer desire. Well, deleting from the collection is not an option from the playlist. So you have to jump to another screen. When you finish the deletion, going back to your playlist, you'll find yourself back at the top of the list. This task would be much more easily accomplished if they'd give you a "delete from all playlists and from collection" option, but they don't.
This software also controls your downloads of music and videos. Ripping from a CD is a simple matter of placing the CD in the drive, and choosing the "rip CD" link. In most cases, the CD's tracklist will come through correctly. But I've learned not to assume that it's always correct. For some reason, occasionally a CD will come through with its tracklist wrong. Songs are listed in the wrong order, and if you don't catch it, your songs will be mis-titled in your collection. So, when I put a CD in, I always compare the tracklist shown on the PC with the tracklist shown on the CD liner. If both match up then I know I'm in good shape. If they're different, then I have to manually correct the songs' titles. Easy enough to do, but a pain to have to do it.
You can play your music or watch your videos directly through the collection. With all of the same features you have available on the player. It's nice to be able to listen to my playlists through my computer's speakers. While your music is playing, if your system is idle for a few minutes it will go into a visual mode. First you'll be shown a visual representation of your entire music collection. Then, for some songs the system will show a background video. Or you can go into "mixview" which shows some background information about the artist and album currently playing.
Finally, the "help" link on the Zune software takes you directly to a searchable online help directory. This is very useful, and necessary as my Zunes didn't come with any manual or users guide. But the online help has been terrific - comprehensive, and easy to search.
A few last minute details
Dimensions and weight: approx 4.5" x 2.5" x .5", 5.5 oz. This makes the device a bit bulkier than I would prefer.
The screen is 2.5" x 1.5", with a resolution of 320 x 240. This is not a touch-screen.
For some reason, my Zune's clock doesn't always keep the correct time. It has nothing to do with the battery wearing down, it will sometimes lose the time even with fully charged batteries.
Speaking of batteries, they last a pretty long time in audio mode (at least 6 hours), but only about 4 hours in video mode. Charging is accomplished via USB cable to a computer, or you can purchase a separate AC adapter.
I hated the ear buds that came with my unit. While the sound quality was fine, the ear pieces were way too big and hurt my ears after just a few minutes. I have since purchased several other types of ear buds. All deliver perfectly acceptable sound quality from the device, so pick your buds for comfort.
Two Zunes can share items wirelessly. Simply hit the "send" option on any song, album, artist, etc. If another Zune is in the immediate area, the two Zunes can agree to share items, which are then "beamed" to each other.
My final thoughts:
Overall, I'm quite happy with my Zunes. The sound quality is terrific, and watching videos is a real pleasure. The controls are logical, and the software, for the most part, works well. Having spent less money on these devices than on iPods, I feel I made a wise choice.
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